Juan Eugenio Serrallés Colón (1836–1921) was the founder of

Hacienda Mercedita Hacienda Mercedita was a sugarcane plantation in Ponce, Puerto Rico, founded in 1861, by Juan Serrallés Colón. Today Hacienda Mercedita no longer grows sugarcane and its lands are instead used for growing mangoes, grasses, landscape plants a ...

Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce ( , , ) is a city and a Municipalities of Puerto Rico, municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The most populated city outside the San Juan, Puerto Rico, San Juan metropolitan area, Ponce was founded on August 12, 1692Some publ ...

, and what was to become Destileria Serralles, producers of " Don Q", a brand of Puerto Rican rum.

Family and early years

Juan Serrallés Colón, born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, was the son of Sebastian Serrallés, a wealthy

Spaniard Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance languages, Romance-speaking Ethnicity, ethnic group native to the Iberian Peninsula, primarily associated with the modern Nation state, nation-state of Spain. Genetics, Genetically and Ethnolinguisti ...

from

Catalonia Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...

who settled in Ponce in the early 19th century and went into the

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

business, and Juana Colon. Serrallés Colón was the owner of "''Hacienda Mercedita''" as well as the neighboring Hacienda Fe and Hacienda Laurel. Juan Serrallés was raised in Ponce and educated in Spain. When Juan Serrallés returned to the island, he returned to lead the work in his hacienda (

plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...

).''Rum: The Epic Story Of The Drink That Conquered The World.''
Charles A. Coulombe. Citadel Books. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp. Page 99. Retrieved 26 December 2011.

"Don Q" rum

In 1865, Juan imported a

still A still is an apparatus used to distillation, distill liquid mixtures by heating to selectively Boiling, boil and then cooling to Condensation, condense the vapor. A still uses the same concepts as a basic Distillation#Laboratory_procedures, ...

which he purchased in France and produced his first few casks of

rum Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is often aged in barrels of oak. Rum originated in the Caribbean in the 17th century, but today it is produced i ...

. He named the rum '' Don Q'' in honor of the legendary Spanish fictional character

Don Quixote , the full title being ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'', is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and is of ...

. Soon after, the "Don Q" brand of rum became very popular in Puerto Rico and the family business began to grow. In 1903 the Serrallés family, under the leadership of Juan Serrallés, installed the first continuous still in Puerto Rico. Juan Serrallés died in 1921 just as the production of rum was being halted because of the United States

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...

Act of the 1920s. Juan's family continued to run the sugar side of the business but for the distillery side started to produce medical alcohol instead of the outlawed rum. It was called ''Alcoholado Superior 70''.

Personal life

Juan Serrallés Colón married Mercedes Perez (1845–1922), after whom he named his sugar plantation. They had three sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Juan Eugenio Serrallés, became the head of the Serrallés family business after Juan died in 1921. Juan's grandchildren – via Juan Eugenio's marriage to Rosa Maria Sanchez – were Rosa, Juan Eugenio, and Felix Juan. Juan Eugenio built a huge castle in Ponce, called the Serralles Castle, for his three children some ten years after his father's death, a testament to the prosperity of the plantation business that Juan Serrallés had started the previous century. Eventually one of these grandchildren, Felix Juan, became the next in line to run the sugar plantation and rum distillery businesses, which he did until his death in 1985.

Currently

The sugarcane business ceased to operate in 1994, with only the rum distillery that Juan had spearheaded decades before still operating. Today, Juan Serrallés Colón's great-grandson, Felix Juan Serrallés, Jr., presides over Destileria Serralles, Inc.

Legacy

The Government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has honored the memory of Juan Serrallés Colon by naming both a grade school and a high school in Ponce after him. There is also an elementary school named after his wife Mercedes.''Escuela a punto de que se la trague la tierra: La vida de los estudiantes y maestros de la escuela elemental Mercedes Pérez de Serrallés podría correr peligro ya que el plantel está a punto de colapsar.''
Darisabel Texidor Guadalupe. 13 May 2013. PrimeraHora.com Accessed 26 July 2020.

Descendants

Notes

Footnotes

References

External links

Don Q Rum

Mercedes M. Serralles
{{DEFAULTSORT:Serralles Colon, Juan 1836 births 1921 deaths 19th-century Puerto Rican people Puerto Rican people of Spanish descent Puerto Rican people of Catalan descent Drink distillers Puerto Rican businesspeople Puerto Rican industrialists Burials at Panteón Nacional Román Baldorioty de Castro Industrialists from Ponce Sugar plantation owners 20th-century Puerto Rican businesspeople